Unnaturally TOGETHER
G. S. Bhargava

Divided we Stand: India in a Time of Coalitions
by Paranjoy Guha Thakurta and Shankar Raghuraman. Sage Publications. Pages 524. Rs 650.

this is a remarkable book on the durability of coalition governments to which the Indian polity is destined for the next few decades, according to the authors who are both second- generation scholars and gifted journalists. Backed by a formidable team of professional researchers of impeccable and outstanding credentials, it is a veritable treatise on the future shape of Indian polity.

The book critically examines the records of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) Government headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee and the incumbent Congress party government—heading the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) coalition with the backing of both the Communist parties, Laloo Yadav group and assorted outfits.

The first qualitative difference between the two is while the NDA had fought the general election as a formation, the UPA had come into being to ensure the requisite numbers for formation of the government. Equally relevantly, while the NDA was headed by the then Prime Minister, Vajpayee, the UPA is presided over by the heredity president of the Congress Party, Sonia Gandhi, in her incarnation as UPA chairperson.

Besides, unnoticed by the authors, the NDA was a grouping of state (regional) parties—the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in Andhra Pradesh, Jaya Jayalalitha’s All-India Anna DMK Party—A-IADMK—the Trinamol Congress of Mamata Banerjee limited to West Bengal, and the Assam Gana Parishad (AGP) of the north-eastern state.

The authors have rightly brought out that the NDA Government did not have adequate Muslim representation, except for a nominal and solitary Muslim member of the BJP, who is seen as more ornamental than substantive. Irrespective of the truth of assertion, perception counts.

The TDP, one of the main pillars of the NDA, also had no Muslim MP or MLA nor did the A-I ADMK of Tamil Nadu, although the two states have nearly 8 per cent and four percent of Muslim population, respectively, nor did the AGP, although there are more Muslims (plus 8 per cent) in the north-eastern state. Among the other NDA constituents, the Akali Dal, the Shiv Sena, and Trinamol Congress fare no better.

On the same reckoning, the UPA has no Telugu representative except through the Congress Party in the state until it opportunistically enticed the Telengana Rashtra Samiti (TRS). Ultimately, the TRS went back disappointed and feeling let down. Further, its ally the DMK, although ‘secularist’ to the bone, has no Muslim legislators. More significantly, the Nehru Cabinet after the transfer of power and Partition did not have Muslims proportionate to the share of the community in the population. True, Education Minister Maulana Azad, ranked three—next only to Sardar Patel, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Home Affairs, Information, and States.

Meanwhile, for the 14th Lok Sabha, the BJP contested 364 of the 539 seats in the House. It was either over-confidence that it would win 70 per cent of the seats being contested or miscalculation. It proved to be both. Its purpose purportedly was to accommodate its coalition partners. The corresponding figure for the Congress Party was 416 of which it won 145 seats. As it happened, the BJP got 138 seats—numerically seven seats less than the Congress tally of 145. The BJP coalition partners, primarily the TDP and A-ADMAK were wiped out. It meant a huge deficit of 81 seats—42 and 39—that along with seven seats less gave the Congress party a lead of 88.

It is unfortunate that in a book of this caliber, the authors have taken recourse to cutting and pasting newspaper reports almost on a daily basis, including Sonia Gandhi’s ‘sacrifice’ of prime ministership in favour of Dr Manmohan Singh, pre-empting in the process Sushma Swaraj’s melodramatic threat to shave off her head. It might have been an amusing digression at that time, but it does not fit in a book three decades later.

The authors themselves concede that Sonia Gandhi’s much-vaunted ‘sacrifice’ was an astute ploy to make Dr Manmohan Singh, with his "relative naivety and inexperience", the Prime Minister. "She would be the real power behind the throne". Also, not long after, in 1998, after the13-day-old Vajpayee Government was voted down, albeit by a solitary doubtful vote, Sonia claimed adequate support—one plus more than half the strength of the House to form the government. While the then President, Dr Narayanan, was having the claim examined, Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajvadi Party opted out—so much for her ‘sacrifice’.

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